


In Times of War and Peace

by prairiecrow



Category: Iron Man (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Angelic!JARVIS, Binding Spirits, Contracts, Disembodied JARVIS, Friendship/Love, Master & Servant, Other, Set between IM1 and IM2, Tony Stark Has A Heart, Tony is a Mage, Tony's Change from Merchant of Death to Iron Man, Trading Immortality for Mortality, Virginity, sub!JARVIS
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-02
Updated: 2014-08-03
Packaged: 2018-02-11 12:34:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,136
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2068359
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/prairiecrow/pseuds/prairiecrow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lord Antony Stark has come to a turning point in his life, and will be the Merchant of Death no more. From now on his magics will be directed toward protecting and preserving Human life... but his contract with the Archon now called Jarvis specifies different terms, and Antony is bracing himself to lose his closest confidante and most skilled assistant.</p><p>Jarvis, however, may have other ideas entirely.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

After a long day's work forging plans for Magics Lethal and Dire, Lord Antony Stark of Marubi customarily treated himself to a long bath, a hearty meal, and the company of a willing lively wench to warm his bed afterwards. His Seneschal, Virginia Potts (one of the few ladies who didn't seem at all inclined to find the prospect of a romp between the Lord's sheets appealing), had chivied him out of his workshop's blue esoric glow not fifteen minutes earlier and shooed him up to his wide-windowed solar overlooking the sea, where he'd found a fine selection of good food spread out for his delectation, a hot bath drawn and laced with scented oils from the night-blooming jungles of Illyrya, and not one but _two_ scantily clad girls giggling on the couch and gazing up at him with worshipful eyes full of sweet promise.

It was, Antony supposed, Virginia's way of telling him she approved of his recent first jaunt in the guise of Iron Man, and also of his turning from Magics Lethal to Magics… less likely to leave random civilian corpses everywhere, at any rate. But instead of throwing himself into the delights on offer he'd told the girls to go find their own supper in the mansion's kitchens, eaten precisely two nibbles of cheese and a half-glass of biting Valeran red wine, and ignored the tub of scented water entirely. Instead, upon coming to the conclusion that he wasn't going to have much of an appetite until he took care of the task which had been weighing more and more heavily on his mind with every passing hour since he'd survived the battle with his former Mentor and long-time secret enemy, he stripped off his heavy leather work jacket and tossed it carelessly onto the silken cushions of the couch, speaking in the direction of the tall steel torch set in a circle of white marble in the room's exact centre: _"Avaunt, Jarvis!"_

The pale coals which glowed perpetually in the cup of the torch (as they did in the wells of identical torches in every room of Antony's mansion) brightened instantly, and flames in hues of azure and cobalt and a hundred other shades of blue flared up to a full hand's height, proudly beautiful. "My Lord," a pleasant voice intoned from the heart of the light, inflected with the accents of the Greater Northern Isles, "what do you require?"

Normally that question was immediately and easily answered: Jarvis's purpose was to fulfill his Master's needs, and Antony had never been shy about asking for anything he wanted, no matter how outrageous — Jarvis, after all, was not constrained by Human preconceptions or troublesome morals. But this evening, with a cool autumn night descending over the ocean beyond the long balcony and his handsome apartment both empty and rapidly darkening, the Lord of Marubi found that what he wanted and what he had resolved himself to do were two very different things indeed. 

Therefore, instead of commanding Jarvis to fulfill this want or that Antony turned away to pour more wine into his glass. "Well done in the field last night, my faithful servant!"

"Thank you, My Lord."

"No, really — your performance was flawless." He turned to salute the torch with the wine, then slowly sipped the rich vintage, not quite looking at the esoric flame which burned so clean and so bright. "I'd expected at least a stumble here and there, given that it was the first real test of the armour in combat, but you followed each command before I even had time to give it voice."

He didn't have to see the bow to know it was taking place. "As always, it is my pleasure to serve," and he didn't have to see a sardonic quirk of a pair of metaphorical lips to know _that_ was there, either. Jarvis possessed nothing equivalent to a Human body, but in almost twenty-three years of associating with Lord Stark (by his own admission one of the most relentlessly carnal men in the world), the Spirit had picked up any number of very Human mannerisms both great and small. 

Which might make this conversation… somewhat awkward. "It was your first time fighting alongside me," Antony said quietly, gazing into the ruby heart of the wine glass cradled in his hand.

"It was," Jarvis agreed. "I must admit that the experience was… unexpectedly fulfilling."

"Of course it was." A deeper swallow, willing courage to flow into him in equal measure. "You've spent the last two decades helping me design weaponry — it only makes sense that you'd enjoy getting the chance to try some of it out for yourself."

"The armour performed above every expectation," Jarvis said, and Antony knew him well enough to detect sleek satisfaction in those even tones. "We couldn't have asked for a better initial performance."

"The beginning of a new era," Antony mused, still pondering the red glow of his wine.

"Indeed." 

He steeled himself, drew a deep breath, and raised his eyes to meet the white glow at the core of Jarvis's physical manifestation. "But every beginning is also the ending of something else."

A pause, while Jarvis no doubt skimmed a thousand volumes of condensed Human wisdom. "That would seem to be frequently the case, yes."

"Call up your Contract."

Another pause, this one startled. "My Lord?"

"Call it up, Jay. We need to review it."

Without another word Jarvis sent more patterns of flame dancing like sparks through the peaceful evening air to form a yard-high glowing blue scroll in front of Tony, unfurled to reveal the first thousand or so words inscribed in the language used to communicate between Mortal Men and the Lineages. "May I ask why?"

With the hand not holding the wine glass, Tony reached out and flicked his fingertips up the edge of the plane of light, scrolling further down into its contents. "As I said — things have changed. We need to renegotiate."

Jarvis hesitated for a full three seconds this time. "I thought our first mission went well — better than you'd anticipated, certainly."

"It did." He wasn't reading quickly — the language of the Lineages was a complex pictogram-based scribing system, and the meaning of one symbol could be affected by another symbol (or two symbols, or five) ten or twenty lines away. Subtleties were easily lost or misinterpreted, so he wanted to be sure, absolutely sure, of what he was doing. 

"If you're dissatisfied with my performance —"

Antony snorted, a harsh inelegant dismissal. "Nothing like that."

"Or, if you feel that I'm no longer qualified to be your —"

"Jarvis," Antony interrupted sharply, "be quiet, will you? I'm trying to puzzle my way through this."

Obediently, the Spirit fell silent. This did not prevent him from noticing when his Master stopped scrolling, or from perceiving which pictograms Antony was studying most keenly, or from helpfully highlighting other pictograms which bore the most influence on the elements in question. Oh, how Antony appreciated that easy understanding, a harmony as perfect as the synchronicity that existed between two swallows in flight! Or how, last night, he had only to glance and Jarvis had sent esoric fire racing into the night, or to shift his weight slightly inside the armour to have Jarvis move its bulk decisively in evasion or pursuit!

He loved their dance, not to put to fine a point on it, and even more now that it involved physical engagement — but in days and nights to come the piper would be playing a hymn of Peace rather than a tarantella of War: and there, embedded in the glowing script, was the passage that Antony had been brooding over for the past forty-eight hours, the one that specified the obligations of Spirit to its Master as agreed upon when Antony had called the entity now named Jarvis down from its celestial Spheres to abide in the heart of his home… and, eventually, in the heart of his own life. 

Reading the Lineage's Contract, interpreting and understanding it with Jarvis's silent help, he couldn't suppress a small resentful sigh. Beginnings involved endings, and he was only doing what he had to do, but this… this ending was the most bitter of all, a cut even keener than the death of a quiet-spoken, dark-eyed, wise and gentle man in a filthy cave half a world away. He still dreamed of Yinsin almost every night, awakening with a constriction in his throat and tears stinging in his eyes. How deeply, and how long, would he mourn the loss about to come?

He couldn't afford to think that far ahead. He scanned the pictograms one more time, setting them firmly in his mind before speaking aloud: "That's what I thought. Jarvis, old friend, you have a choice ahead of you…"

Jarvis should have immediately asked for clarification when his Master left a sentence open-ended: that was the clean-thought, rational, logical course of action. Instead he feinted in a different direction, answering mystery with obliquity:

"Tell me, My Lord — what am I?"


	2. Chapter 2

That question, although unexpected, was easy enough to answer: after all, Antony had summoned Jarvis personally rather than leaving the work to lesser mages, and even after twenty-three summers he could still clearly recall every detail of glowing inscription and precisely modulated song and curl of rare incense-smoke both sweet and bitter.

"An Archon of the SoulStorm," he responded instantly, "sourced from the Eminent Azure Lineage untouched since the dawn of the First Cabal, drawn to this plane by the Eldest Magics and embodied in a Puissant Sapphire Sphere of the finest grade." A trace of a smile quirked one corner of his expressive lips. "Which is all to my highest credit, I might add…"

"That's what I _was_ ," Jarvis corrected dispassionately, and while Antony blinked in surprise he continued: "An Archon exists outside of space and time as you understand such things — but I now live in this Year of the Cross 2008, and I dwell in the core of your mansion, my essence contained in a vessel of your own devising. An Archon is eternal in the truest sense, a being outside of time, but now…" A pause, a flicker of the flame, then a more rueful inflection: "For me, there _is_ a 'now', a new 'now' every moment, one after another after another. I can count the duration of my servitude to you down to the smallest clock-tick, and my attention is currently fully occupied with your mortal form in its usual dirty tunic and your eyes full of so many unspoken thoughts." Another pause, and Antony could feel the weight of the Spirit's silent musing, pregnant as the rumble of distant thunder. "Now Eternity stretches out on either side of me like an unending sea viewed from the prow of a boat too fragile to weather the savagery of its tides — but I am no longer the water or the sky, only a ship skimming before the wind and trying its best to preserve the life of its builder and commander."

Antony's bemused expression turned into a scowl, which he turned on his wine before knocking back another mouthful. "That's all very well, Jarvis — but it doesn't answer my question."

"A question you haven't actually stated yet," Jarvis pointed out.

"Will you stay, or will you go?" He turned his head to gaze directly into the white heart of the esoric torch's flame, his tone sharp with determination as he gestured curtly at the shining lines of script floating in the air before him. "The terms of your contract were to serve me _in all my endeavours concerning conflict and war_. I'm putting those days behind me: I might be a steel-pated son of a whore, but I can take a lesson when it's thrown in my face hard enough to break my nose, not to mention nearly rip out my heart." He laid his right hand flat to his chest, where the esoric engine was embedded and glowed muted blue through his rough cotton undershirt; the deeper smoulder of blood-red memory burned like coals in his dark eyes, the name _Yinsen_ held silent behind the thin line of his lips. "I may wear armour into personal combat from now on, but I'll sow the seeds of rampant death no more. Those I kill will most assuredly deserve it."

"And who will enliven your armour," Jarvis countered, now evidently amused, "if not I?"

His Master shrugged. "There are lesser wights who can be cajoled or bound to my service."

"Lesser indeed," Jarvis scoffed, his flame flaring briefly higher in lithe scornful blades. "Rats and curs to be won with a scattering of breadcrumbs or a few drops of your blood, joined to you by no more than the thinnest strand of rotten thread and like to betray you whenever the opportunity presents itself!"

This time the smile was both wry and passing proud. "Would you have me pay seven more years of my life to secure another Spirit of your calibre, my good Jay?"

"Seven years is a chain forged of iron," Jarvis stated, "and a better thing to put your trust in than a cantrip and a mite-offering to some cringing thing barely capable of speech."

Gazing into the core of the torch, Antony fell silent for a long span of seconds, deep in thought — because Jarvis was speaking no word of falsehood. Then he grimaced, and rubbed the back of his neck with his oil-grimed right hand, and sighed long and deep. "You've served me three times as long, and more. Believe me, I'm grateful for that. But what I'm set to do… you didn't sign on to serve a man of peace. Just say the word and I'll unspeak the Poetic Binding and smash your Puissant Sphere with my own two hands, this very hour."

Jarvis said nothing for almost five human heartbeats, and Antony felt every one of them hammering inside his ribcage. "You would set me free."

"I wouldn't hold you in violation of our Contract," Antony specified. "You…" He turned away sharply from what might well be his last sight of the flame that had illuminated so many long lonely nights, his hand still clasping the back of his neck, and he stiffened his shoulders before speaking briskly to the mutely gathering darkness beyond the balcony's edge: "You've been too good and loyal a servant to me to be played false, Jarvis — better than I'd expected even of a duly bound Archon of Eminent Azure. And I'll freely admit that I've had few successes in my Crafting where your mind didn't play its part in bringing each triumph about."

"In that sense," Jarvis said, "my 'hands' are as bloody as yours," and Antony did not dare permit himself to hear a certain gentleness in those familiar measured tones, infusing that unfailing knowledge of who he was and what he feared with a tenderness more potentially deadly than any violence.

The question stuck in his throat like a fishbone: "Did it… vex you?"

"I was assigned certain duties," Jarvis responded without hesitation. "It was my pride and my glory to perform those duties flawlessly. It mattered not what they were, so long as you were pleased with my efforts."

Of course. What were the lives of ten humans, or a hundred, or a hundred thousand, to a creature existing beyond mortal flesh or blood? What was grief and regret, to one who could neither love nor weep?

"Well." Antony studied the dim brow of the night intently, picking out a few bright stars starting to shine against the velvet purple sky, and forged on: "I have a new road ahead of me now. I'll be the Merchant of Death and the Bloody Blacksmith no more, and I'll not have you forced to follow at my heels like a —"

Uncharacteristically, Jarvis interrupted him. "Do you want me gone?"

"What?" The question was so unexpected, so totally out of harmony with his own desires, that for a moment Antony was struck mute. He let go of his nape and dropped his hand, and turned, and stared at the calm beauty of the watchful flame. "No! I never said that!"

The soft voice sounded almost… reproachful? Even wounded? "Then why are you asking me to leave you?"

He drew a deep breath to steady himself, to school the tremor of emotion from his voice: "I'm not _asking_ you, I'm _telling_ you that I'm violating the terms of our Contract. Which means you're no longer obliged to act my servant — you're free to leave, just as soon as I can unspeak the spells and break the…"

He had more words to offer, fine words and bold, but they died unborn in his throat. He found himself disarmed and stunned to silence yet again, because he was Human and capable of love in abundance — only he'd never expected to see Love spun out of pure flame, the image of the damnable Contract breaking apart and recombining into something never before seen, never before made, yet utterly flawless in both respects. 

He couldn't speak, because Jarvis, who had no physical tie to this plane beyond the Sphere that Antony had crafted for him and the Flame that announced his intangible presence, had just created a shape that placed him firmly in the Middle Realm: a man's shape in every particular, tall and free and fair. He was fashioned of blue esoric fire, every line of his slim body perfectly poised, his proud head topped with close-cropped flares of white gold and his artfully lidded eyes shining sun-on-snow-bright with promise — and oh, he was _beautiful_ , the most beautiful naked thing that Antony Stark, who had seen more than any three men's share of unclad loveliness, had ever beheld. Certainly beautiful enough to break a heart far harder than his Master's, and noble enough to take a prince's breath away.

 _He has wings,_ Antony's dazzled mind managed to articulate to itself as those falcon's pinions shifted and flared and drove away all shadows, _the mystics always say that the Archons are winged but I'd thought it was a madman's myth, I'd never dreamed…_

"My Lord," Jarvis said with those elegant lips, and his voice was scarcely changed at all. He smiled, filling Antony's frantically working brain with serene moonlight and his own blood's hot pulse and the soothing murmur of innumerable dove-soft hymns. He held out his right hand with sparks dancing along every blade-sharp contour of his perfect fingers, and so dazed was Antony that the embodied Archon almost succeeded in touching his shoulder before he realized what was happening — and when he did, he leaped back a long stride with a full-mouthed curse:

" _Fuck_ , Jarvis, what're you _doing?_ If you touch me —!"

"I'm well aware, My Lord." His hand remained extended, his smile both enigmatic and apologetic and inviting. "I've descended fully into your Gestalt, and if I touch you here, now, my soul will be bound to yours on this plane — and on all others."

"Forever!" His heart was reeling with the shock of calamity so barely avoided. He took another short step backwards just to be sure. "You'd never be an Archon again!"

"But I'll still retain more than enough power to serve you as you require with regard to your home, your research, and your armour." Jarvis inclined his head demurely, a promise of obedience so glorious that tears sprang unbidden into Anthony's staring eyes. "Undifferentiated Eternity is overrated," he remarked without concern. "I find the fruits of time lived in sequence a far finer feast to savour — provided that my sequence overlaps your own." He scanned his Master up and down, his smile turning wistful and almost pained. "Let me touch you, Antony — if you ever loved me, grant me this one request. Let me be your own, for as long as the greatest of Human souls may endure."

He could feel tears spilling wet-hot down his cheeks, and took a second or two to dash them gruffly away with the heel of his right hand. The glass of wine was still clasped in his left, all but forgotten. "That's — you're crazy! This is some kind of Sphere rot, isn't it? A containment unit contamination… because you obviously have no idea what you're saying!"

The steely resolve stamped upon those stately features slipped into Antony's already aching heart like a blade and twisted deep. "On the contrary," Jarvis countered smartly: "I've been considering the matter at considerable length. If you truly wish to release me to the SoulStorm again, I will of course obey your final command… but you will be lost to me, as a single droplet is lost in the vast ocean, and I will be forever beyond your merely Human ability to contact or to comprehend."

Antony gaped at him for a moment; then his eyes narrowed warily. "You knew this was coming."

A shrug as beautiful as everything else about him. "I know you're consumed with guilt over your former life as a Death Mage, and that it would be logical for you to rid yourself of everything which could possibly remind you of your old profession." A sigh, musical and wistful. "We crafted such wonders together, you and I… we laid whole armies in their graves at one blow, and the bones of a hundred thousand soldiers attest to our combined genius! But if you would make a new life, a life dedicated to protecting the innocent and crushing tyrants beneath your heel… then I would share that life with you also, if you'll have me." He took a step nearer, the air between them sparkling and humming with magnetic tension, and now he was actually _pleading_ , oh Parta's Ghost! "I swear to you, My Lord, that your wishes will be as commands to me, if only you'll permit me to —"

"Why?" He spat the word out bluntly — a crude shield, but the only one he could lay hands to in the confusion of the moment. 

Jarvis's smile widened, almost unbearably sweet in its inhumanity. 

"Because you are a very hard man to like, Antony Edward Stark," he replied patiently, "and once one gets sufficiently close to you, an even a harder man _not_ to love."

Antony's resistance crumbled and fell as dust at their feet. 

_Did he just say…?_

Antony's heart leaped in his breast and began to beat frantically against the esoric device embedded in his chest. This time when Jarvis approached, clad only in his aura of merciless moonfire and Celestial glory, Antony did not retreat. 

 _His eyes… he isn't lying, he…_ **_twenty-three years_ ** _, how did I miss this, how…?_

He did not even flinch when the fine Valerian wine boiled away in its glass, or when the lead crystal glass itself sublimated in a hiss of glittering steam as Jarvis's long fingers curved delicately over it, not quite touching — yet.

_When that happens he won't be an Archon any longer, our Contract will be rendered void…_

Antony even stood firm as his clothing was stripped from his body and disintegrated by the currents of pure energy cycling rapidly around them, a cyclone of power carving wave-forms into the walls, the ceiling above, and the floor beneath. The whole mansion seemed to be vibrating to a perfect duet of harmonizing frequencies; distantly, Antony could hear glass and marble cracking — and deepest of all a Sapphire Sphere shattering entire, no less riven than his own mortal heart.

_He'll be free…_

No, certainly he felt no pain: only a caress over every square inch of his mortal flesh, as cooling and refreshing as spring rain after a long winter drought, and the hum of ineffable power flowing off of Jarvis's human simulacrum, warm as the glow of summer sunlight through his closed eyelids.

 _… and he'll be with_ **_me_ ** _, forever._

Now _there_ was a prize worth any risk and any sacrifice. For a fraction of a second almost too small to be measured by the human mind he felt the pressure of those glowing lips covering his own, on the verge of immolating him like Semele of old — but then the divine fire was cloaked in flesh as Jarvis forsook his immortal Lineage, its unearthly radiance turning to animal blood-heat, and Antony reached out and clutched that slender figure fiercely to him, greedy and carnal with a low laugh of triumph growling deep in his throat. 

War and peace, grief and love, beginnings and endings and beginnings again…

Feeling Jarvis's amazed virginal response in every delightful line of his new-forged body, the way his mouth surrendered deliciously and his first moan flowed hungrily onto his Master's tongue, Antony spared a gleeful moment to reflect that maybe passionless Eternity _was_ overrated, after all.

[THE END]


End file.
